Heritage as Landscape Manicure – Questioning Idealized Historical Landscapes as a Model for Sustainability; The Example of Toarp Ecovillage in Sweden

ABSTRACT When the ecovillage of Toarp was established in the peri-urban landscape of Malmö, Sweden, it was designed with inspiration from the historical regional landscape and its settlement forms. In the launching of the area the past was mirrored as more sustainable than the present. As demonstrated, the historical references in the planned and produced Toarp landscape are however made selectively and rather allude to an idealized historical past than to the processes that actually shaped the existing landscape. This, it is argued, is an aesthetization of the landscape heritage that is problematic because it uses constructions of the past – in this case to argue for sustainability – in a way that conceals the becoming and significance of fundamental landscape realities.


Introduction
Embedded in the peri-urban landscape of Malmö, Sweden's third biggest city, lies the Toarp ecovillage (Figure 1).It is situated on the outskirts of Oxie, a commuters' town with ca 12.000 inhabitants, 5 kilometers from Malmö city center.The ecovillage was established as a residential area in the 1990s and stands out as a distinctive landscape feature.It consists of an assemblage of 27 modern semi-attached houses that through their lay-out along a winding road and surrounding small scale gardening gives visual references to an historical past, including a regional landscape flavor.Arrangements for piling up firewood, the style of signs, as well as the design of the houses and the street pattern also allude to times gone by.The ecovillage is since its erection advertised and promoted as an ecological sound and sustainable way of living, one argument being that it connects to the past (Malmö stad 1991b).
The overall aim of this study is to critically discuss the relationship between landscape, cultural heritage, and planning for a sustainable society (cf.López Sánchez, Tejedor Cabrera, and Linares Gómez Del Pulgarb 2020 and van Knippenberg, Boonstra, and Boelens 2022).As indicated in the introduction, the study focuses on an eco-village in the peri-urban landscape as a starting point and a concretization of this topic.The argument is that eco-villages are interesting examples of how the landscape's cultural heritage is utilized to highlight a sustainable and ecological alternative to conventional housing planning.Not least because the chosen examplelike other ecovillagesdoes not constitute a historical landscape in itself, but is a modern creation with historicizing features, there is reason to examine more closely in what way and with what arguments history and cultural heritage are included in the launch of the ecovillage.Thereby the investigation add to earlier studies of ecovillages, which have examined, e.g., their historical development (for Sweden, see Magnusson 2018), their potential for promoting alternative lifestyles and emancipatory social transformation (Hong and Vicdanb 2016;Del Romero Renau 2018;Moravcíková and Fürjésová 2018;Casey, Lichrou, and O'Malley 2020), their varying discursive representations (Lennon and Gunnerud Berg 2022), and efforts to expand the ecovillage practices (Temesgen 2020).In the present study, the topic is related to the so-called post-industrial economy that has supported a market-oriented influence not least on the heritage sector, leading to the utilization of heritage as a selling argument in different contexts.This is illustrated in the Toarp case where allusions to a regional landscape are part and parcel of launching the ecovillage as an environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable residential area.While the latter obviously is a desirable occurrence, the argumentation is problematic from a heritage point of view as the historical dimension in the Toarp landscape turns out to be quite piecemeal and eclectic in character.By utilizing field observations, map studies and document analysis, the complexities and contradictions in this specific planning process is demonstrated.In the last section, the findings are discussed in a wider context before some conclusions are drawn.
Promoting ecological sustainability has been a key element in urban and peri-urban planning during later decades (Mostafavi and Doherty 2010;Genelettia et al. 2017).It is however not always clear to what extent the label of "sustainability" actually corresponds to a significant sustainable development, and to what extent it is used more illusionary as a way of marketing cities and new urban developments through what is sometimes called "greenwashing" (Tokar 1997;Lyon and Maxwell 2011;Delmas and Burbano 2011).In a Swedish context critical studies of for example the districts of Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm (Rutherford 2008;Wangel 2013) and the Western Harbour in Malmö (Holgersen and Malm 2015) have shown that while local measures like solar panels, small wind power plants, waste recycling etc. are environmentally beneficial as such, it might be questioned whether these urban developments actually epitomize a sustainable way of living, considering among other things the life-style and the consumerism in the districts.Sustainability has thus emerged as a selling point and as a question of cultural references.
In the Toarp case there is reason to further such a critical discussion by analyzing the role of landscape heritage in the launching of the Toarp ecovillage.This matter is essential to get a fuller picture of in what ways a strive for sustainability is expressed and supported in present day landscapes.As demonstrated by Davies (2010), advocacies for sustainability and green politics often use nostalgia as a rhetoric tool, appealing to a sense of loss of an earlier more ecologically sound and sustainable way of living, which could be restored with the right politics.In Swedish planning such tendencies can, for instance, be noticed in nature conservation and historical landscape preservation where arguments for ecological sustainability are found in natural or historical cultural ecosystems (Mels 1999;Sanglert 2013).Within Swedish city planning an example could be the critique of modernism that actively refers to an early twentieth century small scale urban ideal as a way to a more socially sustainable city in the future (Rådberg 1997).
In the reading of the Toarp landscape the mere appearance of the ecovillage in terms of its architecture and spatial form signals an alternative to the surrounding peri-urban landscape: this place is ecological, andalthough modernit clings to a rural past.In accordance to what is argued above, there is reason to investigate the connection between the advocacy of ecological sustainability and the alluding to a regional past in a landscape perspective.This is specified in three objectives for the study: Firstly, the aim is to contextualize the Toarp case in the complex issue of landscape heritage and planning.As will be further dealt with below, modern Swedish planning shows a contradictory relationship with the landscape's historical dimensions.The Toarp case illustrates this in a novel way because of its designation as both ecological and historical in a small-scale and "every-day landscape" setting.Secondly, the aim is to investigate why and how the landscape's history in Toarp is invoked in the planning process as a design argument for the present ecovillage, i.e., for it being a more sustainable way of functioning as a residential area.At the same time as this helps explaining the Toarp landscape in a regional setting, it can hopefully contribute to the discussion of why the past is sometimes looked upon as an inspiration for future sustainability, as a kind of "sustainable nostalgia" (cf.Davies 2010).Thirdly, the ambition is to demonstrate how a theoretical elaboration of the landscape concept could be helpful in such a study.
The following discussion refer to a broad understanding of sustainability as defined in the Brundtland report (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987), i.e., as a responsibility to utilize present resources in a way that allows future generations to meet their own needs.As indicated above, reference is foremost made to the ecological dimension of the sustainability concept, and not to the whole breadth of ecological, social and economic sustainable development as defined in the report.It should also be noted that it is not investigated whether or not the Toarp ecovillage could be regarded as more sustainable than other settlement areas in any of these respects.That is beyond the scope of this article.The study will furthermore not delve into the history of the ecovillage movement or definitions of different types of ecovillages.For its objectives, it is sufficient to quote a general definition formulated by Moravcíková and Fürjésová (2018): "Ecovillages are urban or rural communities of people where likeminded residents share a commitment to live more sustainably with ecologically responsible practices like sustainable house building methods, advanced technology, sustainable resource management and social support/ … " (695).Rather than assessing the actual sustainability of Toarp, or defining its position within the ecovillage movement, the intention is to explore why and in what ways references to a heritage discourse are used to stage the Toarp ecovillage as more sustainable.
The examination takes it point of departure in the landscape, more precisely by identifying Toarp as a specific feature of the peri-urban landscape: How can this landscape be understood?howcan it be read as a part of the modern Swedish peri-urban landscape?In the next section, this will be discussed from an epistemological point of view.
Reading the Produced Landscape Don Mitchell's argument that the landscape is produced "as an act of will" within a societal context (Mitchell 2008, 34) emphasizes that cultural landscapes must be understood as intentional formations, not as unwitting scripts in the material world.Such intentional formations always involve expressions of power, in scale varying from struggles over broad societal relations to narrow local disputes over power and influence.This implies that discoursesin the Foucauldian sense of understanding how truth and knowledge are produced and maintainedplay a fundamental role in landscape production (cf.Mitchell 2000, 142).In the context of understanding and analysing, i.e., reading, a landscape, the crucial thing is therefore to try to understand in what ways both discourses and the material landscape work in the guidance of our way of seeing and thinking ideologically about landscapes (Mitchell 2000, 144;2008;cf. Cosgrove 1998;2006).
While thereby acknowledging the importance of landscape perceptions and interpretations, it should at the same time be stressed that this is far from accepting that landscapes are actually produced out of discourses.While discourses are necessary to understand and to relate to any landscape, unlike actions, they do not affect the material aspects of a landscape in "real-time" (Bhaskar [1975(Bhaskar [ ] 1978, 25;, 25;Sayer 2000, 33-39).Rather, just like any structure, the cultural landscape takes form through the individual and collective interaction in historical events and processes.As indicated above, this realist approach is not to diminish the importance and impact of social structures and meanings, but rather an attempt to avoid the epistemological fallacy of confusing what exists in the outer world with what we claim we know about it (Bhaskar [1975(Bhaskar [ ] 1978, 36;, 36;cf. Ferraris 2014).The post-modern tendency to turn away from materialism and prioritize discourse in social theory opens up for what Sayer has called "the elimination of the referent" (Sayer 2000, 36), i.e., the dissolution of the importance of the object in processes of interpretation and narration, and when appealing to experience (Eagelton 1997, 67).This reasoning has guided the methods for analysing the Toarp landscape.The study is based on a combination of field observations, map studies, and a discourse analysis of several planning documents for the area.By constantly making cross references to the results from these different studies, the study presents an historical account of the Toarp landscape that is empirically well grounded and open for an interpretation in a broader societal context; in this case especially relating to a national Swedish planning discourse.Therefore, before entering the Toarp landscape, a brief background to some applicable themes in this discourse will be given.

Modernity and History in Swedish Planning
The development of Swedish planning and conservation policies during the twentieth century was closely connected to the progress of the Social Democratic welfare state and its efforts to modernize Sweden.Whereas there on the one hand have been propensities to throw most anything historical over-board, and pay tribute only the future, there have on the other hand been moments of strong advocacy for building the future on history and tradition.Even if Swedish planning during the twentieth century certainly embraced modernity in most of its dimensions, it did not do so without explicit efforts to incorporate selected aspects of both an ancient Swedish nature and a traditional Swedish material culture in the landscape (Anshelm 1995;Lundgren 1991).Regional architectural styles and building materials could be examples, but also rural landscape features.When, for instance, the concept of sustainable development was introduced in policymaking after the advent of the Rio Convention in 1992, and environmental concerns started to play a central part in the development of the Swedish planning system, it also included policies of nature-and heritage conservation.Not least remnants from the preindustrial agricultural landscape, as wetlands, meadows, grazing lands, traditional fences etc. have been focused in the planning practice.As will be shown, these tendencies have a bearing on the Toarp case.
The evolution of a modern administrative system and the professionalization of Swedish planning were played out in a political division of societal sectors with a strong focus on expert knowledge, often rooted in academic disciplines (Forsberg 1992;Mårald 2008;Andersson 2009).This development eventually resulted in a focus on parliamentary induced top-down organizations and large-scale solutions (Sanglert 2013, 125ff).This has in turn nurtured a spatial rationality in which different governmental interest have been identified through areal demarcation (Hägerstrand 1988;Germundsson and Riddersporre 1996;Bergman 2012;Sanglert 2013).In a generalizing way, it could be said that the modernist ideal of "everything in its right place" has tended to erase the internal relational qualities of lived environments in favor of a rationalistic division between natural and cultural areas, between urban and rural spaces in the planning process (Hägerstrand 1993;Mels 1999;cf. Williams 1973;Lefebvre 1991).
While the Swedish planning-system in this way strongly relates to a modernist discourse in organization and structure, it is also important to note that there has been a change in contemporary planning and conservation that is partly "self-critical" and follows a general ideological, political and economic development in the western world over the last forty years.These changes were partly rooted in a parallel change in academic social science research, simply expressed as a turn in emphasis from materialism to discourse, from ontology to epistemology (Sayer 2000, 32-36), from politics to culture, from production to consumption, and from structuralism to post-structuralism (Matthewman and Hoey 2006).
Similar tendencies can be noted in Swedish planning and conservation.According to a thorough investigation the 1980s and 90s in Sweden saw the development of a mutual postmodern and libertarian planning discourse (Strömgren 2007).Mirroring this development, the countryside has gone through a corresponding transformation as a consequence of a post-industrial cultural economy.While the agricultural sector has been put under an increased pressure due to changes in national agricultural politics, the role of the agrarian landscape and the countryside has increasingly changed from being the base of subsistence and production to being a stage of cultural performance (Potter and Tilzey 2005;Päiviö 2008).Analogous changes may also be noted in heritage politics.Sanglert (2013, 305ff) has argued that a turn over from "culture conservation" to "cultural heritage" as a specific heritage conservation paradigm can be seen as a change towards a more postmodern approach in which the past is seen primarily as a narrative rather than something that has actually existed.
Such trends are however problematic, because they tend to separate the actual, produced and lived landscape from its mediated and represented forms in plans and prospects, thus leaving it open for opportunistic interpretations and politics.In the following, it will be examined how some such processes became part of the rhetoric for the Toarp ecovillage.

The Toarp Landscape
Toarp ecovillage is situated in a landscape that during the period from the 1960s onwards has evolved from a predominately agrarian setting to a landscape of strewn but yet palpable urban influence interspersed with arable lands, grasslands and small forest patches.
Walking the landscape around Toarp ecovillage gives an unglamorous but yet distinctive illustration of a peri-urban landscape to be resembled on the outskirts of many European cities (Figure 2).In less than half an hour the wanderer encounters huge arable fields joining up to planted patches of wood, gardens of one-family houses, a few farmstead buildings from the nineteenth century, a railway bank, dirt roads, small open waters, remnants of old gardens and firms, a row of houses from the 1920s and 1930s along the road, plantations, residential areas from the 1960s, enclosed forest lands, and football fields.
Here the Toarp ecovillage is situated along its winding road and its adjacent parcels of garden cultivation on the other side of a straight dirt road (Figure 3).Not far from the ecovillage a grove with old trees, a farmhouse and a pond bear witness of a former village core, while the railway from the 1860s cuts straight through the arable fields close by.From the Toarp ecovillage the edges of Oxie with its modern one-family and detached houses are visible.The area around Toarp and adjacent Oxie holds a number of different housing-styles, from traditional rural farming units to various kinds of suburban settlements.As indicated by the supposed prehistoric origin of its name, the village of Oxie has a very long settlement history.It has also been one of the largest peasant villages in the area.Also Toarp has a long history and was probably formed as a village around the year 1000 (Jönsson and Brorsson 2003).Like in many other villages, the local landscape of Oxie and Toarp was radically changed during the enclosure movement in the early nineteenth century when the village cores with their tightly sited farmsteads often were split up and replaced by a dispersed settlement structure.This meant that the open agricultural landscape was spatially totally reorganized in accordance with the contemporary rational ideals within an emerging agrarian capitalism (Svensson 2005;Germundsson 2008).Besides the dispersed settlement, the organic shapes of field boundaries and local roads were replaced by straight and angular lines.Eventually land-use became less diverse and fields grew bigger with the expansion of arable lands through the introduction of chemical fertilizers and modern farming techniques.In Oxie the enclosure in 1806 almost totally split up the village core and a big majority of the farmsteads were moved out on new plots (Jönsson and Brorsson 2003).Toarp experienced a spatially less radical enclosure one year later, leaving some of the old farmsteads in the village core, while some were moved out (Pauli n.a.; "Ekonomisk karta" 1917).
In Oxie the ancient village center was to be substantially resettled in the late nineteenth century with the establishment of small scale farmsteads and street-houses inhabited by people from an emerging rural working class.In Toarp the village core was less transformed, while a dense settlement appeared a couple of hundred meters to the east through the establishment of a number of small houses in an intersection between the major southward road and the railway ("Ekonomisk karta" 1917) (Figure 4).The precise location of the settlements can probably be explained by the initiative of the local landowner to sell pieces of land, but should basically be related to a growing landless rural population's possibilities to find jobs, for example at the nearby landed estate of Skabersjö.While the estates generally solved their steady labor-force demand through farmhands and workers living on the estate domains, the seasonal and temporal fluctuations could be solved by hiring landless people living in the vicinity of employment opportunities (Olsson 2002).The modern history of the Oxie and Toarp landscape and its peri-urban character should also be linked to the railway between the cities of Malmö and Ystad, constructed in the 1880s, and a number of urban influenced developments, such as industries, graveyards, waste disposals, and allotments.
During the first half of the twentieth century the landscape around Oxie and Toarp basically retained its rural character, although it was a rurality highly influenced by the vicinity of the railway, the city of Malmö and the estate of Skabersjö with its big scale agricultural production (cf.Qviström 2010).The most radical change of the settlement structure in the area came about during the post war era with a massive development of residential houses in Oxie in the 1960ies turning it into one of the first outlying suburbs of Malmö (Skånes värdefulla jordbruksmark 2001, 44-45).Subsequently a construction of rows of detached houses followed in the 1970s and 80s and of blocks of flats in the1990s.Each phase has left its characteristic imprint in terms of street structure and the placing of the houses (Figure 5).In Toarp the development took a different turn than in Oxie and was characterized by a rather small-scaled and unregulated growth of houses, mainly erected along the central road.Toarp thus maintained much of its late 19th/early twentieth century character and the added houses and small village industries continued to reflect the historical land ownership structure, for example the dominance of the landed estate of Skabersjö (comparison of small scale maps: Ekonomisk karta 1917 and 1968).
In later times the Toarp and Oxie landscape has been filled in with new generations of infrastructure and urban functions, not least due to an ambition over the last decades to densify the suburban commuter towns, so they become moreurban.The planning for such a development takes it arguments in both environmental concern, for example less individual motor transports, and in the launching of an urbane life-style (Qviström 2015).The peri-urban expansion has also lead to different forms of encasement of rural settlements in both Oxie and Toarp.Still, the historical structures in the landscape are often clearly visible, not only in the buildings but also in the street-lines and in areal forms.One of the latest additions to the Oxie-Toarp landscape is then the Toarp ecovillage, established to the east of the historical village center in the 1990s (cf. Figure 5).

History of Planning and Planning of History in Toarp
The local plans for the ecovillage were presented in 1990 (Malmö stad 1991a; 1991b) and it was constructed during the following years.In the planning documents, Toarp is portrayed as a sustainable way of staging a modern lifestyle in the rural landscape by alluding to some of its historical qualities.As described in the introduction the houses are small scaled and placed in blocks along a curved street.Around the houses there are garden plots, bee hives, a small football field, carports and a parking lot.Besides the garden plots there are no agricultural lands connected to the ecovillage, although possibilities to keep some hens and pigs are mentioned in the plans.In many respect the ecovillage differs from the earlier more typically modernist housing areas in adjacent Oxie, but despite its historical and rural references the creation of the village meant a considerable change and a contrast to the local rural landscape.The attention will now be turned to the planning of this area, while the broader picture will come back in the concluding discussion.
In 1967 the small municipality of Oxie (including Toarp village) was incorporated into the municipality of Malmö.In a Master plan for Malmö worked out in the late 1960s Toarp, like Oxie, was designated as an area for a major residential suburban expansion, in line with the current trend of providing the city's working population with one-family houses with gardens (Generalplan för Malmö 1969).Unlike in Oxie there were, however, no detailed municipal plans or major developments implemented in Toarp in the 1960s or 70s.The small-scale settlement that emerged east of the historical village during this time was therefore a rather unregulated expansion.The developments were of course guided by contemporary building regulations but were, just like similar rural settlements, not following any detailed municipal plan.In Malmö's Master plan from 1980, Toarp was still designated as an area for major residential developments, but already in 1983 these plans were abandoned in a supplementary plan for southern Malmö.Such a policy turn was quite typical in the aftermath of 1970s' oil and energy crisis (but also induced by demographic reasons) and hampered the sprawl of spatially extensive suburban housing projects in many areas.In the succeeding Master plan for Malmö municipality from 1990 Toarp was consequently not intended for intense exploitation any longer.The plan states that limited complementary settlement might be considered and that detailed municipal plans for regulating the settlement issues should be worked out (Malmö stad 1990).
The initiative to establish Toarp ecovillage came from the municipality of Malmö, while the area was developed as a cooperative housing association by HSB Malmö, a regional branch of the cooperatively based and nationwide organization HSB, and its housing company. 1 HSB Malmö has since long tight connections to the municipality of Malmö and both have from the 1990s onwards advertised their business as a strive for sustainability and environmental concern (HSB Malmö n.d.; Environmental program for the city of Malmö n.d.).The ideas and the plans for the ecovillage that emerged in the early 1990s fit well into such policy.The plans were worked out by the planning office in Malmö and they were formulated with an environmental concern in which a historical relation to the surrounding landscape was emphasized (Malmö stad 1991a;1991b).
The planning documents for the ecovillage state that it will be given the shape and feeling of a traditional Scanian 2 village (which predominantly existed of farmsteads situated close to each other).In the same document, however, the council stresses that close attention need to be paid to the design of the houses, and states that early twentieth century "street houses" in the area (originally inhabited by artisans and agricultural workers) could serve as a suitable inspiration (Malmö stad 1991b, 3).This argument is peculiar as it deviates from the idea of mimicking the ancient farming village, and it lends the plan a certain inconsistency in its historical allusions.This is further demonstrated in planning regulations concerning the existing early twentieth century settlements.Here it is stated that some of the twentieth century buildings in Toarp, originally erected for bird farming, do not fit with the overall character of the settlement and therefore need to be replaced by "small free-standing living houses" (Malmö stad 1991c).The intension of the regulations is also to preserve the character of a small-scale "mixed" Scanian agrarian settlement and at the same time enable a modernization of the existing dwelling houses, as well as a gradual completion through small single houses.According to the planning regulations of the existing Toarp settlement new additions shall mimic the old building style of country side houses, here referring to traditional half-timbered farmhouses.Furthermore, and in line with the contemporary planning laws, historic qualities of the older houses shall also be respected in the change of front materials and coloration (Malmö stad 1991c).
The historicizing dilemma is further illustrated in the architectural style of the houses in the ecovillage, that in some respectsmainly in the placing along the road, but also by mandatory roof angles and limitations in building materials and colorsseem to refer to agrarian "street houses", but that in size, external design, and in their identical appearance more alludes to an urban settlement of terraced houses from the mid-twentieth century.Also the plan's narrative has an urban touch to it, as it describes an environment with small stairs, pathways and other details that rather seem to originate in a town than in a village.Moreover, the street is also supposed to end in a "square" forming a communal meeting place (Malmö stad 1991a).The Swedish word for square, "torg", also has a typical urban feeling, compared to for instance a communal village street, in Swedish "gata" or "bygata".
Taken together the regulations for the existing settlements in Toarp and the detail plan for the ecovillage show that the historical allusions in the plans are quite eclectic.Existing historical landscape features are selectively emphasizes and mixed with idealized visions of traditional rural settlements.History and heritage thus become a picturesque quality of the area, for instance expressed in the characterization of the old windmill as an "interesting landmark".The selective consideration of the cultural history in the landscape is also reflected in the rather odd characterization of archaeological monuments as "nature" together with ecological and physical characteristics of the area (Malmö stad 1991c).
The execution of the ecovillage plan meant a change, a kind of intervention, in the local domain-structure of the "everyday" landscape in Toarp.Besides the concrete settlement changes also new patterns of movement and usage in the landscape emerged as the former crop fields were built upon and routes of passage changed.This is reflected by comments to the plans that were made during a public referral and that are included in the planning documents.Most comments came from institutions and regional and national governmental agencies.The regional museum, for example, was positive to the building of the ecovillage, not reflecting on the contradictory historical allusions referred to above (Malmö stad 1991b).
Voices from the public were scarcer, but in an objection to the proposed building of the ecovillage the owner of the farmstead adjacent to the intended site of the ecovillage expressed her concerns regarding the risk of negative effects on the current land use and the accessibility to the local landscape.The owner feared that a decrease in the use of pesticides on the grasslands, stipulated by the closeness to the built-up area, would have negative effects on the crop yield and she also points to the risk that children from the playing on the fields will harm the crops.At the same time she points out that the straight road besides which the ecovillage is supposed to be built functions as a playground for local children.Concerns were also raised by owners and tenants of the properties along the road towards the modern Toarp, east of the ecovillage, regarding the risk of an increase in traffic along the road to the ecovillage (Malmö stad 1991b).The ecovillage was thus perceived as a threat and a change in the access to the local landscape by several local inhabitants.After clarifying the concrete expressions and arguments for the historicizing planning of Toarp, the following discussion will give the implications of this in a landscape and planning perspective.

Discussion
The analysis of the planning documents for Toarp and the ecovillage has shown that the planning of the Toarp ecovillage and the production of its landscape foremost was influenced by an idea of a cultural history, rather than by the existing historical traits in the local landscape.This is shown by the mixture of arguments from different historical times that motivate the basic structure and the lay-out of the ecovillage, the placement, building style, materials and colors of the houses, and the design of additional settlement.This consequently puts in question to what extent the design of the Toarp ecovillage really corresponds to the actual local landscape and its history.Observing that the planning documents selectively make reference to sometimes existing and sometimes nonpresent historical landscape elements in a predominately pictorial manner, it could be argued that they, rather than reflecting a search for relevant historical guidelines, seek to naturalize the ecovillage settlement in the local landscape by invoking a discourse of the past as more sustainable.As reflected in the analysis, the planners and developers did however not make any explicit arguments that the historical references per se, for instance the lay-out of the road, the architectural style, or the construction of a square, have any special sustainable qualities.Yet, as the whole ecovillage project certainly was launched as ecological sustainable, the historical dimension and the active allusion to a cultural heritage obviously became supportive arguments for the ecovillage's ecological sustainability.So although the historical dimensions in the ecovillage were not directly being claimed sustainable, it could be observed that once the idea of using heritage as a main attractive feature of the ecovillage, both planners and experts (for instance the regional museum) either launched or excused the eclectic and incoherent historization of the Toarp settlement by referring to its ecological sustainability.In line with what was more generally demonstrated in the section on Swedish planning, it could be argued that the historization of the Toarp ecovillage is an expression of how the cultural heritage in later decades has been increasingly engaged as a selling argument in the cultural economy and related contexts.In the Toarp case it is thus demonstrated how the idealized historical landscape was employed as a model for sustainability.
The problem with such a planning and design is hardly that inspiration in present day construction is found in different epochs and merged together, but rather why and how this is done.In the Toarp case the invoked ecological qualities are underpinned with the argument that they connect to the local historical landscape, but this only partly hold true when it is confronted with the historical records.As the study has shown, it is for example not to the formative enclosure reforms or the livelihood positions of the agricultural workers that the plan Toarp ecovillage alludes, but rather to an imagined ancient village.By mixing bits and pieces from different idealized images of the Scanian countryside the planners and the developers thereby performed an aesthetization of the Toarp landscape that, contrary to the aim, detaches it from the surrounding local landscape (cf.Duncan and Duncan 2001).
In the way the cultural history and the historical traits in the landscape were used, heritage became a way to package an urban life-style in a rural setting, making it more accepted in a contemporary sustainability discourse through whatin line with the concept of "greenwashing"could be described as a kind of "cultural wash".In parallel with the definition of greenwashing, that includes both a selective positive communication about environmental performance to cover up an actual poor performance and the idea that environmental issues is a question of technical solutions ignoring underlying social or political considerations (Tokar 1997;Lyon and Maxwell 2011), the concept of "cultural wash" might be useful to denote a corresponding use of heritage.
As demonstrated, the establishment of the ecovillage meant the eradication of certain landscape elements that were deemed not fitting the new landscape and it was also felt as a threat by people already living in the area.Ascribing to David Lowenthal's claim that "landscape is our basic heritage" and "relevant to everyone" (Lowenthal 1992, 37) supports that idealizing the landscape history in the way it is made in the Toarp case risks excluding past and present voices that from an egalitarian point of view should have a say.Critical investigations of the societal conditions under which landscapes have been produced reduce this risk considerably.Not by predicting the "right way" of handling the landscape as heritage, but by contributing to formulate historically authentic arguments that could challenge idealized conceptions of the past (and present) landscape.
Furthermore, the reference to sustainability within the esthetics of the Toarp plans relativizes ecological sustainability in ways that could be problematic (cf.Holgersen and Malm 2015).The leitmotif of Toarp, its ecological and sustainable characteristics, should for example not only be understood in its local context, but also in a wider geographical and social-political sphere.From such a perspective, a regional planning for sustainable housing, a supportive infrastructure and other related interestsincluding recreation, heritage and nature conservationwould be of crucial importance.In such a context it could, however, be questioned whether Toarp is actually the more sustainable alternative.While the "ecological" measures taken on a household level (i.e., solar panels, effective insulation, waste-recycling, possibilities of local gardening etc.) obviously are environmentally beneficial compared to a corresponding conventional housing, it should be problematized if the life-style of the inhabitants in the peri-urban settlement of Toarp is less environmentally burdening than the lifestyle in many other housing areas elsewhere (cf.Wangel 2013).Such an analysis has not been performed in this investigation, but it could still be argued that the inhabitants' needs for traveling to work-places, schools, shops, etc. are conditioned by the localization of the ecovillage and that alternative solutions might be more efficient to reach the goals of ecological housing.
At the same time, and although the focus in this article is to critically examine how history and cultural heritage are connected with sustainability as a planning argument, there is reason to pay attention to how arguments concerning tradition and history are connected with basic ecological and sustainable goals within the ecovillage movement today, e.g., within the Global Ecovillage Network (cf. GEN 2023).Also from a climate perspective, there is reason to discuss a sustainable future for the historical dimensions of landscapes.Ecovillages with a historical focus could thus be seen as part of a wider debate about cultural heritage as a driver of a more resilient future, e.g., expressed in the report "Future of our pasts" (ICOMOS 2019).
Questions for the future are thus, on the one hand side, how the arguments around ecovillages, landscape, heritage, society and sustainability are connected, and, on the other hand side, whether these arguments risk being used in diverse contexts as a springboard for other, veiled, interestsespecially in a time where sustainability has become a "selling" argument.This study suggests that there is such a risk.

Conclusions
The story of the Toarp ecovillage is the story of a residential area staged in the peri-urban landscape of Malmö on the initiative of the municipality in the 1990s.Coming back to the specific objectives in the introduction, it could be concluded that both the planning and the establishment of the ecovillage were reinforced by historically idealized imaginaries in order to launch it as ecologically sustainable.The study has revealed how the new ecovillage landscape was designed as historically imprinted, not primarily according to the actual societal processes that produced it, but by diverse and quite randomly conjured up historical landscape traits, suitable to shape a nostalgic, sustainable and ecological appearance of the area.
This have been shown by combining a landscape historical approach with an epistemologically realistic understanding of the interplay between discourse and materiality.In a broader perspective, it has been demonstrated that the development in Toarp is framed in a post-modern trend to turn from materialist to discursive predominance in Swedish heritage business and planning, in turn connected to a post-industrial cultural economy.From a landscape heritage point of view such a development is problematic as it risks concealing the societal processes that produced the landscape and thereby also risks legitimizing idealized understandings of it.
As developed in the discussion, there is every reason to study such risks more closely, not least from a landscape sustainability perspective.Notes 1. HSB was once spelled out as "Hyresgästernas Sparkasse-och Byggnadsförening" (Tenants' Savings Fund and Building Association), but as the saving funds today are administrated by Swedbank and the building by commercial companies, the acronym nowadays is just a name (Historien om HSB n.d.) 2. Referring to the southernmost province of Sweden: Skåne, in English often called "Scania".

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
The research was funded by Formas, a Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.

Notes on contributors
Tomas Germundsson is professor in Human geography at Lund University.His main research areas are historical geography, landscape geography, and cultural geography.His research has mainly focused on Scandinavia.He has participated in several cross disciplinary projects on long term landscape changes and has also published on landscape heritage issues.The main historical period studied is ca 1750-1950, and the research has covered for example enclosure reforms, landowning patterns, the landscape of the great landed estates, the Swedish smallholding movement, and the modern peri-urban landscape.Other fields of interest are planning issues and climate change effects, for instance sea level rise and coastal planning.He teaches at all levels at the Department of human geography and is a PhD supervisor.
Carl Johan Sanglert is a student in Human geography and cultural heritage coordinator at the County Administrative Board in Jönköping County.His research has mainly focused on the development of a realist landscape ontology and the use of landscape as a concept in conservation and planning.The research has been influenced by critical realism, time geography and critical discourse analysis.In his current position the County Administrative Board, he mainly works with cultural heritage in planning, environmental impact assessments and landscape conservation.He is also committed to developing interdisciplinary perspectives on sustainability and landscape management.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Topographical map of the suburban landscape southeast of Malmö.The city of Malmö to the northwest.Toarp is east of Oxie and the landed estate of Skabersjö is east of Toarp.©Lantmäteriet i2012/927.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Economic map from 1917 the properties in the Oxie and Toarp area.Note the "empty" site of the former village core in the center of the image and the late 19th/early twentieth century settlement of Toarp emerging in the southeastern part of the area.©Lantmäteriet i2012/927.